Alex de Minaur put on muscle to compete on clay at the 2024 French Open where the Australian beat Daniil Medvedev in the round of 16.Alex de Minaur put on muscle to compete on clay at the 2024 French Open where the Australian beat Daniil Medvedev in the round of 16.would arrive at Roland Garros with trepidation, knowing, with all the will in the world, that his stay in the French capital would be short and probably brutal.
It remains true that hard courts are still De Minaur’s best surface but his improvement on clay has not been by accident. Instead, De Minaur realised that he needed to put on muscle and so he set about doing it just as he’s done everything in his career, with absolute and total conviction. “Physically, I’ve gained a lot of muscle, a lot of strength. Because my tennis itself, my groundstrokes are not probably best suited for clay, I don’t play with too many revolutions on the ball, that’s where the strength comes in.